


Candy’s Handbook for the Recently Deceased

by lapsed-bookworm (queerlybeloved777)



Category: Pose (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Character of Color, Canon Sex Work, Canon Sex Worker(s), Canon TWoC, Canon Trans Character, Gen, Haunting, LGBTQ Character of Color
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-23 11:15:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21319282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queerlybeloved777/pseuds/lapsed-bookworm
Summary: Candy had asked a petite, buck ass naked woman with an electrical cord wrapped around her neck if it was possible that she’d missed her own funeral. She’d shaken her head no but wasn’t able to talk around her crushed windpipe for a further explanation. From what Candy could gleam from the other ghostly residents of the motel, there was a tugging in the direction of any such event and aknowingthat someone remembered them.The only problem with this was that Candy needed someone to think about her for the first leaving to take place. She was also at the mercy of the fickle streams of time in this recently deceased state. It felt like she’d been dead for ages, but a living person may have only gone through a few hours.Ideally -hopefully- she would experience her first pull when someone realized she was missing, and knowing the House of Ferocity, that might take until the morning when she hadn’t come back from her shift.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Kudos: 13





	Candy’s Handbook for the Recently Deceased

**Author's Note:**

> While I don’t want to void the funeral for Candy in canon, I think that’s a future element compared to this focus on the time in between her death and her body being found.

##### I. <strike>Accepting One’s Death</strike> Bitch. You dead.

**Rule #1: <strike>One should aim to accept the circumstances around one’s death, even if they were avoidable, preventable, accidental, and/or outside of one’s control.</strike> _Fuck the wolves in sheep’s clothing._**

As much as it pained Candy to admit, she wasn’t sure she could pick the guy who killed her out of a lineup, even if her (after) life depended on it. About as tall as her when she was wearing her heels - the nice red ones, mind - with brown hair. White. A suit that said he worked somewhere, but not a nice enough one to say he was going to leave a big tip. Wasn’t wearing a wedding ring and didn’t make a point of talking, or excusing as it were, his stepping out on the missus. Wasn’t noticeably older than her, but he could’ve had a baby face and kept up on dying his hair to hide the first gray streaks for all she knew. He was a client and willing to pay for a room, so she didn’t have to contort herself in the backseat of his car. That’s all that mattered when it helped to pay her bills.

**Rule #2: <strike>One should aim to accept the involvement of any persons in one’s death, even if they were bystanders, indirectly involved, or direct contributors.</strike> _Fuck all them bastards who’d rather kill you than admit they want to fuck you._**

As far as Candy was concerned, this was self-explanatory. She didn’t have to worry about doing good and getting her ticket Upstairs no more. If she could get her hands on that motherfucker, she could pour all of this anger out on his trans panicking ass. Oh, he’s afraid that he’s less of a man? He’s afraid seeing a woman’s dick gonna make him gay? If she could get her incorporeal hands to wrap around the handle of her trusty hammer, if she could stop going through the edges of doorways and corners, if she could scream in his face and be _heard_ \- Candy could release all of this energy and return it to its source, a fucking coward.

**Rule #3: <strike>One should make peace with the inability to remember certain details of one’s final days, as the brain often forgets painful or traumatic events in order to cope.</strike> _Fuck any bitch who said you could remember shit._**

It was unnerving to have the trip in her train of thought, the blank spaces in her memories. Candy could remember a few details here and a vague impression there, but she didn’t like the questions she was left with. She was coming out of the bathroom - or was she going in? She had finished changing into the negligee for the striptease, right? Because it didn’t make sense for the client to have dressed her afterwards, that didn’t feel like it fit with the whole murder thing. It was a blitz attack. Candy’s head hurt whenever she tried to think of her death, but she wasn’t sure if it was a ghostly version of a headache, a clue, or some coping shit. She couldn’t remember if there was pain or not, if it was over with quick, or if she had died slowly enough someone could’ve saved her. It was worse than blacking out because there were no empty bottles, trails of clothing, or piles of vomit to clean up in the morning as breadcrumbs.

##### II. <strike>Accepting One’s New State of Being</strike> You look like shit.

**Rule #1: <strike>One’s default presentation will be as they were in the last moments of life, barring injuries that the mind may not have accepted during the dying process.</strike> _You better hope you died in an outfit you like._**

Granted, Candy wasn’t entirely sure, but she was very confident that she had been wearing the negligee while the client was losing his goddamn mind. As opposed to the weird route of him dressing her dead body, that is. She had run into other dead people hanging around the motel who had died in not quite modest attire, and she had to admit that she did appreciate having _something_ between her ghostly flesh and their prying eyes. Nosy bitches.

**Rule #2: <strike>One can alter their presentation with enough focus and concentration on manipulating one’s energy.</strike> _I’m sorry to all you motherfuckers who died naked._**

Candy didn’t have a fucking clue how much energy it took to change her form, but when she wasn’t wishing someone would pick up on her thoughts to castrate the client with a rusty knife, she was staring in the bathroom mirror of her last motel room. It would be a start if she could at least have the clothes she’d been wearing earlier in the day with, y’know, solid fabric. Maybe some heels and her favorite coat, to feel more like herself. If she allowed herself to imagine other possibilities, she wished that she could alter her body in this ghostly form, but that was the route of making herself sad. And if there was one thing that she wasn’t going to do, Candy was determined to not cry and fuck up her makeup.

**Rule #3: <strike>One may be able to manipulate one’s energy to interact with corporeal matter, as if one were living, but one should accept that failure is not a weakness in this area.</strike> _Well, apparently, some motherfuckers can be Casper._**

Candy hated that she couldn’t interact with her surroundings like she’d been accustomed to while living. It was the big things (hurting the fucker who killed her), the little things (the way she still reached to turn on a lightswitch when entering the motel room), and the things in between (she wished she could stop the men who tried to hurt other working girls - the raised hands, the lightning fast slaps, the warning flags). If she concentrated enough on her anger, she could sort of create a small breeze, but she couldn’t actually touch anything and have it move. Granted, some of it may have been that Candy was still “recently deceased”, but it was awfully hard to keep track of time in this state.

##### III. <strike>Decisions About One’s Afterlife</strike> Now what, bitch?

**Rule #1: <strike>One has the option to remain with one’s body, any component of one’s remains, any donated organs, any sentimentally significant objects, or any personally significant places as an afterlife.</strike> _Haunt them motherfuckers._**

Candy wasn’t entirely sure why she couldn’t find her body. It was a puzzle she didn’t like to think about, if she were being honest. She must’ve been _dead_ dead when her client moved her body because it just wasn’t in her memories of dying and the afterlife. It made her chest feel tight and uncomfortable and she had enough energy to make the curtains sway when she thought about what might’ve happened. Did he split up her body into pieces? Bury her somewhere? Toss her body into a dumpster? The only thing she knew was that she couldn’t leave the motel because it was the last place she knew she’d been.

**Rule #2: <strike>One has the option to attend any wake, funeral, memorial service, and any such funerary rites in one’s memory before “moving on” to one’s applicable afterlife.</strike> _I ain’t showing up late to this party!_**

Candy had asked a petite, buck ass naked woman with an electrical cord wrapped around her neck if it was possible that she’d missed her own funeral. She’d shaken her head no but wasn’t able to talk around her crushed windpipe for a further explanation. From what Candy could gleam from the other ghostly residents of the motel, there was a tugging in the direction of any such event and a _knowing_ that someone remembered them. Sometimes, she might be able to wander around a place where someone thought about her enough and go haunt-to-haunt as it were. The only problem with this was that Candy needed someone to think about her for the first leaving to take place. She was also at the mercy of the fickle streams of time in this recently deceased state. It felt like she’d been dead for ages, but a living person may have only gone through a few hours. Ideally - _hopefully_ \- she would experience her first pull when someone realized she was missing, and knowing the House of Ferocity, that might take until the morning when she hadn’t come back from her shift.

**Rule #3: <strike>One may - if not spiritually inclined - consult with a Recycler instead of choosing a “destination”.</strike> _There’s some peaceful become a tree shit._**

On some days, Candy couldn’t blame any of the other dead people who wandered around the motel for choosing this route. There was a certain peace to getting to rest and to closing your eyes and sleeping in the atoms of the trees, water, earth - hell, even the stars. It was a way to live on for those who didn’t have literal children to carry them on. It was frustratingly out of reach for her until someone found her body.

##### IV. <strike>Resolving “Unfinished Business”</strike> Fuckin’ complications.

**#1: Those who died from SUDDEN, UNFORESEEN circumstances - heart attacks, brain aneurysms, weather events, etc. - should consult with their Caseworker to pass on any messages to family, friends, peers, medical staff, etc. _(Leave a message after the beep.)_**

Candy envied the poor bastards who had quick deaths like this, a heart attack while cumming or some shit. She wouldn’t be left with so many questions, so many stretches of blackness in her memories. Shitty timing would be so much easier on her House members.

**#2: Those who died from SUDDEN, UNFORESEEN, and VIOLENT circumstances should consult with their Caseworker for an extension on making a decision about one’s afterlife. _(Find my body, bitch!)_**

Candy didn’t like to think about her “extenuating circumstances” that allowed her to remain in this shitty in-between until someone found her body. The anger at the client was hot and clear, and it kept her from feeling the aching sadness, questioning numbness, small and lost feeling. She was a woman who had done the best that she could do. It was bitter, like a dog that returns to its vomit, to turn over her circumstances too many times in one ghost-day. She wanted one of the fuckwits in her House to remember her. She wanted to be found. She wanted to bitch about the mortician’s horrible makeup skills at the funeral. She wanted to rest.

**#3: CIRCUMSTANCES NOT OTHERWISE SPECIFIED: Consult with one’s Caseworker in order to avoid the automatic refiling of one’s case in the Poltergeist Division. _(You gotta ask permission first.)_**

Candy hadn’t met anyone in this category at the motel, but she couldn’t help but ignore the note in an attempt to not think about what might happen if she was stuck like this for “too long”. Would she turn into a poltergeist? Could she at least leave the motel if she did? Would it be petty for her to scare other House members? Would it be depressing to see how many dead attend the balls? Fuck, were there balls for the dead with the former Elders, and the young AIDS cases, and her extended family? She hoped there’d be something for her to do to bid her time.

**Author's Note:**

> While Candy is a fictional character, I thought it’d be fitting to include links for the [International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers](https://december17.swopusa.org/) (Dec 17th) and the [Transgender Day of Remembrance](https://tdor.info/about-2/) (Nov 20th).


End file.
